MANILA, Philippines — Compared to other countries, the Philippines is still “doing good” in containing COVID-19, Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said Monday.
Año was reacting to the World Health Organization (WHO) report saying the country had the fastest rise of COVID-19 cases in the Western Pacific region.
“If you can look at the figures, most of these new positive cases were coming from particular regions, Region 7, National Capital Region and Region 8. But for the rest of the country, we are doing good,” Año said in an interview over ANC.
Año noted that many parts of the country are already under eased lockdown measures or modified general community quarantine or nearing the “new normal.”
Further, Año said it was “expected” to record more positive cases as the country “increases” its testing capacities.
“If you look at the projections of research groups, if we did not put the country or particularly Luzon under lockdown, we might have an infection of 3 million and death of about 200,000,” Año said.
“So you see, we are doing good compared to other countries like United States, Brazil. Somehow we are able to contain [the spread of the virus] in the whole country,” he added.
Several parts of the country have been under lockdown since mid-March to curb the spread of COVID-19.
“I think it is also not fair to compare with Singapore because Singapore is a very small country, small population,” he further said.
Data from WHO showed the Philippines logging over 8,100 new cases since June 16, reportedly the highest among the 22 countries in Western Pacific.
The country was followed by Singapore which recorded over 2,300 new cases during the same period.
Nationwide, there are already over 35,000 COVID-19 cases of which 1,244 have died and 9,686 have recovered.